picnic in the park. it has been quite a week and it's not over yet, I have one more day of work and then a delayed weekend. but despite the early starts and general busyness there have been a few lovely things that have kept me happy.

• check out this amazing pinata cake diy that my brother sent me. it reminds me of the humpty dumpty easter egg that's full of smarties! I can't wait to give it a go.
• I loved this incredible story from paper radio about one lady's love for ham radio, which ultimately led to some serious intergalatic communication. I jumped out of the car beaming after listening to it, which was slightly embarrassing. 
• new emoji icons! a small reward for finally updating my iphone software. there's a pig snout and a battery in the latest release. strange but welcome additions.
• the gorgeous photo my friend messaged me of her less than a week old baby having a big smile in bed with her partner. it was heart melting! I can't wait to meet him in two weeks time.
• and a working day spent in yackandandah, victoria. I crossed the border this week to work with suzi and she prepared a picnic for us to share in the park. we ate rolls filled with chicken, quinoa, olives and homemade babaganoush and snacked on pineapple in the sun. 
• my yackandandah souvenirs, which include a giant bunch of rhubarb purchased from the local museum and some homemade tomato sauce. tony has promised to make sausage rolls this weekend, yipee! I think the rhubarb might be transformed into pie filling.

have a good weekend!

long days on the road. lately I've been spending about 3 days on the road, often driving for hours to reach the town I'll be working in that day. I cherish these days, I love being out of the office and working with people face to face. it's something I longed for when I used to work in sydney. but there are trying parts of these days too. sometimes I'm on the road by 6.30am and not back until the early evening. I often come home dusty, sweaty, dehydrated and hungry. sometimes a little sunburnt.

but I always come home with a new story, and I love the feeling of constant discovery even if it's just visiting a tiny town like the one pictured above, which is somewhere between lockhart and the rock in nsw. I am often inspired by the littlest moments and exchanges that I witness between people on these trips and I am grateful for these glimpses into other people's lives. at the best of times they can broaden, challenge and enrich my understanding of life.

this week I've been to culcairn, lockhart and milbrulong. tomorrow I'll make my last trip for the week, heading to wodonga in victoria and possibly to yackandanda too!

one silly thing I do when I'm on the road... I try and stop into the local bakery to see what kind of biscuit specialties they have. I've discovered most towns have their own version of an iced vovo or wagon wheel and I'm happy to sample them all.

mini weekend. my weekend started at lunchtime today, after running my regular writing workshop at the library in town.

so far I've had a lovely nap in this much anticipated cooler weather, enjoyed a generous square of tony's mum's famous jam slice for afternoon tea and a long chat with a good friend in sydney. this weekend we are celebrating the birth of a little boy who entered the world this morning, the first in my friendship group and I can't wait to meet the little guy in sydney in a few weeks time.

tony's dad is visiting this weekend and he has very generously agreed to deliver a special care package for me when he drives home on monday. so tomorrow I will be baking a cake and some bread to be sent along with a big box of local veggies to someone who really needs it.

we might also buy a raised garden kit so we can put in some veggies for autumn!

if you're interested, here are two great podcasts I listened to this week:

• tit for tat - the story of sandra wilson - a fascinating look into the complex life of one of nsw's longest serving female prisoners. sandra was 20 when she shot and murdered a stranger.
• harper high - part two - this two part series was devastatingly good but also heartbreaking. this american life sent three reporters into a chicago high school which had been troubled by gang violence. the series starts here.

p.s - do you like my new plate? I bought a polka dotted dinner set last weekend for $2 a piece!

love stuff. it's our 5 year anniversary today! which is exciting because I love any opportunity to celebrate. this is one of my favourite photos of tony and I, we only have a handful together. it was taken in tokyo, in harajuku in 2009 and it was our first trip overseas together. it had been my dream to go to japan and we talked ourselves into buying cheap tickets, even though we could only just afford to go.

one thing I've realised about tony is that if I say something's my dream, he takes it seriously and helps me make it happen. like moving to wagga wagga from sydney to take a job at a place I've only even dreamed of working. we talked about it for awhile and then made the move together. and it was a big move and one we've made work for both of us.

so I don't throw around the 'it's my dream' line too often at all but it's so reassuring to know that my hopes for the future are totally encouraged by tony.

inspired by pink ronnie's amazing memory book that captures the story of her ever evolving relationship with her husband in photos, notes and mementos, I've been making a little memory book as a gift. I've discovered that it's really hard to make a surprise gift for the person you live with! so I've been waking up super early on weekends (like 6.30am!) and creeping downstairs to cut and stick photos into a book. and sneaking off to work in the library. and making excuses for what I'm doing on my laptop so I can photoshop things. I haven't printed photos in years, so it was so satisfying to plan it out, print the photos and put it all together.

we're going to have dinner at a new-ish place in town and if I can muster the energy, I might bake a cake. I've had a super long week and driven over 700km for work in a few days so I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to going out to dinner.

have a nice weekend!

cookbook club, croissants and catching up. sometime after dinner on sunday night, I finally settled into the weekend. often I'll relax due to sheer exhusation and that's probably what happened this weekend. truth is, I've been avoiding something, something important and big.

a few weekends ago I found out that someone in my family is very unwell and deteriorating at a rate we hadn't let ourselves anticipate. it froze me for awhile as I thought of all of the things that could happen in the coming months only to come to the conclusion that I might never be ready for what might eventuate. I'm kind of okay with that now. in the weeks after the news, my family mainly communicated with each other over email. in that time I thought hard about whether I could live, long-term, far from my family. we're close and being away when good and bad things happen just doesn't feel right. and more than that, I have so much fun with I'm with my family.

on sunday night I picked up the phone and spent most of the night speaking to everyone in my immediate family. embarrassingly it was something I'd been putting off, something I had let myself be afraid of. I didn't know how we'd handle talking about what was happening, whether anyone wanted to talk about it or whether anyone would know what to say.

what changed my mind was something I'd heard in a podcast. I had recently listened to an interview with a woman who works to help people with suicide bereavement. she said something that really affected friends and family who had lost someone was that people tended to avoid them, even going to the extent to cross the road to avoid passing by and all because they didn't know what to say. the last thing I wanted to do was avoid or ignore the people I love at a time like this so I gingerly made the first call and spent the rest of the night dialing my siblings, having quiet moments but laughing too.

there are other things that happened over the weekend, mainly food things. on saturday night we headed over to have dinner with some friends in our very first cookbook club event. last year we dreamed up a book club where you didn't have to read a novel and discuss it. instead we'd take turns picking a cookbook and then allocate a course to a different couple.

this month the book was moro east.  we were on starters so tony made a delicious labneh with anchovies, chilli, mint and cucumbers and I made some flatbread to go with it. it was so good! there were more elaborate dishes to come including a very fancy dessert, which was a kind of pomegranate ice with rosewater and honey, served with a dollop of double cream and a lemon cookie. maybe the best thing about the night was it was pretty stress free for everyone, you just make a small portion of the meal and everyone pitches in. it was a truly communal effort.

on sunday morning we had friends over for breakfast, tony has been very excitedly making his own croissants lately and gave chocolate croissants a go. we now have a healthy stockpile of pastries in the freezer, ready for next weekend.

and finally, a rare moment of neatness and quiet.

pizza night. on friday night, dinner wasn't served until just before 9pm. I'd underestimated how long it would take to make dough and tomato sauce but boy was it worth it.

I tried two new recipes that I'll definitely use again. the dough was surprisingly quick and easy to make and not too messy! which is great because I can be really clumsy with flour. the dough was also lovely to play with, all soft and suitably elastic.

the thing that held me up the most was the tomato sauce for the base. I used a recipe from the what katie ate cookbook and next time I'll make it in advance, it's much lighter and tastier (not to mention less salty) than tomato paste and this recipe made enough for 4-6 pizzas.

what I didn't capture on camera was one of the pizzas getting stuck on our pizza stone. that wasn't pretty.

a day trip to apple town. early on thursday morning I headed up the snowy mountains highway headed for batlow. there are 29 local government areas in the region I work in, which means I spend a fair bit of my time in the car driving to different towns. the drive towards adelong is one of my favourites, it's not too far away and it's pretty and winding, which is good for variety.

somewhere between adelong and batlow I found myself stuck behind a very old and very slow moving truck filled with cattle. I didn't mind, it was fun to drive slowly and admire the beautiful scenery. batlow is on higher ground and so when I got out of my car, the first thing I noticed was the cooler air, which smelt of wood. and then I noticed the apples, everywhere.

I'm slightly envious of the town's mascot! wagga wagga's main logo is a big black dot at the moment, which is not nearly as playful or as versatile as an apple. 

apparently the apple boom in batlow happened in the 50's. walking around town I saw the old packing building and a now disused mountain maid factory. I remember drinking mountain maid apple juice as a kid! it's such a pretty town and there are lots of orchards still in operation.

one of my favourite things was stopping by at some of the roadside stalls to pick up some fresh fruit and vegetables to take home. the little shop below was self-service. there was an honesty box, a calculator, plenty of change, a scale for weighing your fruit and veg and plastic bags and boxes. very organised!

I went home with a bag full of apples, two punnets of raspberries (they were half the price of the supermarket ones and all different sizes!), some snowpeas, beans and a jar of blackberry jam from a friend's farm.

p.s - sorry about all the odd-shaped photos! I was juggling lots of gear on the day so snapped everything on my phone.